The claws of coconut crabs have the strongest pinching force of any crustacean, according to a study published November 23, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Shin-ichiro Oka from Okinawa Churashima Foundation, Japan, ...

Researchers have developed a new method for reading the history and "family trees" of cells. Called MEMOIR, or Memory by Engineered Mutagenesis with Optical In situ Readout, the technique can record the life history of animal ...

Adapt or die. That's the reality for an animal species when it is faced with a harsh environment. Until now, many scientists have assumed that the more challenging an animal's environment, the greater the pressure to adapt ...

Showy ornaments used by the male of the species in competition for mates, such as the long tail of a peacock or shaggy mane of a lion, could indicate a species' risk of decline in a changing climate, according to a new study ...

Researchers have discovered two small dinosaurs together with a lagerpetid, a group of animals that are recognized as precursors of dinosaurs. The discovery made in Brazil and reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology ...

Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst led by biologist Duncan Irschick who created the Beastcam Array, a rapid-capture, field portable tabletop system for making high-resolution, full-color 3D models of living ...

Freshwater fish play a surprisingly crucial role in feeding some of the world's most vulnerable people, according to a study published Monday (Oct. 24) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The ongoing decline of more than 300 species of animals is having significant environmental impacts and posing a food security threat for millions of people in Asia, Africa and South America, according to the first global ...

Researchers for the first time have documented the killing of millions of animals in Brazil's Amazon Basin for their hides following the collapse of the Rubber Boom in the 20th century, causing the collapse of some aquatic ...

Animal

Animals are a major group of mostly multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently. Most animals are also heterotrophs, meaning they must ingest other organisms for sustenance.

Most known animal phyla appeared in the fossil record as marine species during the Cambrian explosion, about 542 million years ago.